Pandora Can and Will Profit Beyond Mobile Advertising

Written by: Rocco Pendola01/28/13 - 8:50 AM EST

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NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- I get the feeling that the relatively inferior among us think great entrepreneurs such as Facebook's (FB) Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, Tesla Motors (TSLA) and PayPal founder Elon Musk and Pandora (P) founder and Chief Strategy Officer Tim Westergren are idiots.

We dog these guys relentlessly. Examples are endless. From Barrons no-respect and no-clue $15 price target on FB to people telling Jack how to run his ever-exploding businesses to folks claiming Tesla can't possibly have a future to the notion that Pandora is little more than a story of expensive content up against the relatively new mobile advertising space.

First, as I explain in the video that accompanies this article (see Page Two) and in the closing paragraphs, there's so much more to Pandora than this surface-scratch easy "analysis."

If any of us accomplish a sliver's worth of what Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Musk and Westergren accomplished in the best 30 seconds of their lives in the 90 or so years we'll live, we've done something. So, stop hating. It might cost you money.

Next month, in conjunction with Media 11:11 , we'll debut short- and full-length episodes of TheBeach on TheStreet. These videos will focus primarily on the startups populating Southern California's startup scene in the Santa Monica-Venice corridor, widely known as "Silicon Beach."

We'll be lucky enough to have, in addition to some interesting Silicon Beach startups, Tim Westergren join us in February as we launch the series. Going forward, I hope to have veteran success stories such as Westergren on to talk about the process of -- and the pain and suffering inherent in -- building not merely a company, but an idea, a passion, a vision from the ground up.

That's what Westergren did with the misunderstood Music Genome Project. In just over a decade, he took this sophisticated system that powers music discovery from conception to reality to private then public company. It's been an impressive run. And, if you talk to the guy for more than 12 seconds, you recognize he's not done yet.

Guys like Westergren and the others who populate Pandora management and rank and file do not believe they have even come close to tapping the company's as well as the Music Genome Project's potential.

However, over the weekend, I attended a Social Distortion concert on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Walking along Sunset Boulevard past the legendary clubs and other relatively unknown venues got me thinking about something I have only briefly written about in the past -- Pandora's potential as a local music promoter and ticket seller.